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Forum Discussion
I need to disable 5g to hook up my smart plugs that use 2.4
My smart plugs - WEMO and Meross - have great trouble connecting to the Orbi RBR750. They need to use 2.4g. Their support says to turn off or turn down the power of the 5g on the orbi to do it. I ...
LukaLG wrote:
My smart plugs - WEMO and Meross - have great trouble connecting to the Orbi RBR750. They need to use 2.4g. Their support says to turn off or turn down the power of the 5g on the orbi to do it. I can't figure out how to do this. Help! Thanks.
Please provide the model number of Wemo and Meross smart plugs. I just now dug out a Wemo Mini that I bought in Jan, 2019.
Loaded Wemo app. Plugged in Wemo. Went through configuration.... and it works.
Did absolutely nothing to my Orbi RBR50 system. Phone was connected to Orbi WiFi at 5G. If this is your model, then support is wrong.
I'm happy to buy a Meross plug to test. Which specific model of Meross plug do you have?
Amazon delivered the Meross MSS110 today. Installed Meross app, followed directions, plug is working on Orbi WiFi.
Repeat: Android phone remains connected to Orbi 5G WiFi channel. Did nothing to the Orbi system.
Now have 13 brands of smart plug that connect to Orbi WiFi "no problem."
Sorry for my delayed response. I finally figured out how to turn down the radio signal for the 5g, which involved Advanced-->Advanced-->Wireless settings. (I was just doing Advanced-->Wireless before, which was incorrect).
When I turned 5g down to 25% temporarily, I was able to link the Meross. When I turned it back to 100% and tried to link a second Meross it did not work. Not sure why my system functions differently than yours. I see from the discussion boards than a number of people seem to have the same problem as I in their setup functionality. Note that I have had the same issue with WEMO.
In any case, it was beyond the call of duty for you to purchase a Meross just to test it out, and I really appreciate it!
Smart Plugs are my new hobby (since Covid has restricted almost everything else. And, it turns out to be less costly than my previous hobbies!)
Smart Plugs require a bit of patience, and sometimes more than one attempt. Plus, when I said "nothing", that it literally true. Did not chance the Transmit power, stop broadcasting SSID... nothing. I did notice the Meross plug seemed to 'hickup' at one point (maybe looking for WiFi systems?)
Some Internet of Things (IoT) devices definitely pose problems. Specifically..
- Some attempt to pass the MAC address of the WiFi access from the smartphone app to the device. If the phone is connected to a 5G WiFi access point, this will fail because the device will never 'see' that access point (MAC address). Those are the devices which require all sorts of bother (stopping SSID broadcast, getting the phone far enough away from the access point that it selects the 2.4G signal, installing another access point that is 2.4G only, etc.)
- Just recently, someone posted about an old thermostat that displayed the SSID of every individual access point (but not the MAC address of each one), which made picking the right access point a crap-shoot.
- There was a WiFi controller made to place inside automatic blinds that was the very devil because the setup process was simply unreliable. Took me 5-6 identical tries to get it to work. fail, fail, fail, fail... worked! (sexactly same input every time)
Wemo (Belkin) and Meross were pretty normal for me.
What software does your smart phone run? My Sony Android phone is on Android 10 (not the newest). I have a tablet running Android 11 that I can try if it will help.
I have an iPhone running 15.4.1, but this problem has been longstanding including previous versions.